The world is awash with hacked and leaked datasets from governments, corporations, and extremist groups. In many cases they're freely available online and waiting for anyone with an Internet connection, a laptop, and enough curiosity to analyze them. Using real hacked and leaked data as examples, Micah will go over how to investigate datasets yourself. You'll see secret docs showing cops spying on Black Lives Matter protesters, read chat logs leaked from a Russian ransomware gang, learn how to analyze GPS coordinates hidden in video metadata that Trump supporters accidentally uploaded to Parler while storming the Capitol, and peak behind the curtain of a WHOIS privacy service used by extremist sites like the Oath Keepers and 8chan. All of this work comes from Micah's new book Hacks, Leaks, and Revelations.

[He'll also be doing a workshop specifically on the BlueLeaks dataset of hacked law enforcement documents, and signing books!]

In conjunction with Micah’s talk (“Hacks, Leaks, and Revelations: The Art of Analyzing Hacked and Leaked Data”), he will be teaching a workshop specifically about one of the datasets: BlueLeaks. In the summer of 2020, during the BLM uprising, someone hacked hundreds of U.S. law enforcement websites and leaked the data to Distributed Denial of Secrets. The dataset contains evidence of police misconduct. In this workshop, he’ll share a copy of the BlueLeaks dataset - which is full of documents marked “Law Enforcement Sensitive,” including from agencies like FBI and DHS - with all participants and teach you how to start analyzing it. Specifically, you’ll learn how to run custom software Micah wrote called BlueLeaks Explorer directly on your laptop, running inside Docker containers. Bring a laptop running Linux, Windows, or macOS and, if possible, an external hard disk. You’ll need about 300GB of free disk space.